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Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania (PS4) by jp (Oct 21st, 2025 at 12:33:36) |
I played this for a few hours. Mostly I wanted to see where things were at with Super Monkey Ball. I wasn't expecting to find a wildly different or innovative game - just super monkey ball... which is what I found, though I did spend more time on the minigames.
I've never been a huge fan of Super Monkey Ball - and I'm sort of surprised by how little love it gets in the context of people who like to play games that are really hard. This game is like Super Meat Boy (oh wow, I just realized they're both SMB! Which is also Super Mario Bros...). I mean, clearing some levels isn't THAT hard - but to get all the bananas AND record times? This is some serious dedication IMO. Lots of practice and real finesse.
Cool stuff?
Well, I quickly unlocked Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza series), Sonic and Tails, and "Jet"? (the skater from Jet Set Radio). I thought it was a nice touch that when you pick these characters instead of bananas you get pill bottles, rings, and spray cans! (like in their original games). The sounds are even different! (with the Sonic ring sound being particularly memorable for me).
I then played all the mini-games. Some are more fun than others - and the be fair I was either playing solo or against AI, which is probably the less ideal way to play. I was surprised by how hard some of the games were! There's one in which I was only able to score once! (forget the name, but it's the one where you roll down a ramp and then up into the air - you're supposed to open the capsule to glide/drift to a target to get points. I only landed on a target ONCE. Everything else was a splash into the water because I fell far, far, short of the intended target. So, clearly there's something going on that I didn't understand - how to glide or whatever. And, many of the games have more sophisticated/complicated control schemes than you'd expect for a "mini-game". I thought it was interesting how they're all adapted to "your character is in a ball" - while still being "true" to the original game they're riffing on (lots of sports mini-games - the baseball one was interesting because it's sort of like a pinball in that you have to hit targets to get on base and stuff like that)
Anyways, it was fun - but I decided I wouldn't spend all this time on it either...
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The Wizards (PS4) by jp (Oct 18th, 2025 at 19:08:11) |
I'm slowly dragging out the PSVR games to play them. Strangely this one was a more recent addition - it was cheap, and the back of the box lists all sorts of awards.
But...
I must have played for 30 minutes or so? Didn't finish the tutorial. I started to get nauseated - not uncommon in VR. But, the game wasn't really working for me either, which was a shame. Especially since it took me a while to get everything ready since I had to charge up both move controllers (one at a time!).
The premise is simple, and fun enough, you're a wizard! And you cast spells with your hands doing different motions. I only got to see three things - the teleport action, creating and throwing a fireball, and summoning a protective shield. This was fine. The bigger problem I had was that I was never able to figure out how to adjust the facing. It always felt like I was facing to the side (90 degrees away from the TV) and never re-centering. And, since I was mostly facing away from the TV - lots of the hand gestures worked poorly because my hand/arm was obscured. Weirdly, this seemed like the default setting! So, I'm sitting, facing ahead, and the game then instructs me on how to do the fireball with "ghost" hands - that are off to the side...
I went into settings and stuff and couldn't figure it out. This might be a "user error" situation? Anyways, the nausea was enough of an excuse for me to just uninstall the game. A shame really. I wonder if the version that won all these awards was on a different platform?
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Crow Country (PS5) by dkirschner (Oct 15th, 2025 at 16:25:14) |
Bought a new TV (old one died two weeks after moving), ditched the aging surround sound system (waiting on a sound bar for replacement), and upgraded my HDMI cable so that the PS5 can output 4k at 120hz. So naturally, I subscribed to PS Plus to bask in my upgraded setup and promptly selected a PS1-style game that could probably run on a toaster.
Crow Country is better than it has any right to be, a totally adept and captivating survival horror game. You play as Mara, a woman investigating a derelict amusement park near Atlanta, Georgia. I was so surprised to see it set there that I thought the devs might have been from there, but no, they are British. I am still curious if they are familiar with the old (unfortunately named) Dixieland (now renamed "Fun Spot") in Fayetteville. Anyway, the park has been closed for a couple years and there are rumors of monsters. Mara discovers that, yes, there are monsters, and that there is quite the mystery to uncover.
None of this sets up Crow Country to be particularly great or anything, but every aspect of the game clicks just right. It's like a small-scale Resident Evil or Silent Hill. The story is interesting and leads you deeper and deeper into the park. The characters are intriguing, each with their own motives related to the story. The Crow Country amusement park itself is detailed, well laid out with several distinct areas, and creepy. The enemies are gross and dangerous. The puzzles are relatively simple yet clever (I got 8/15 secrets). The combat is very old-school-survival-horror, frustrating as that can be. Aiming can be a pain in the butt, but the thing I liked least about the combat was that enemies can corner you. I died probably 5 times, usually from getting cornered (though one time from ignoring a warning about pulling a book from a shelf that was titled something like "Sudden Death" and getting a spike to the face) and each time, you go back to your last save, which could have been a while ago, thanks to some old-school design.
I'm most impressed by just how tight everything felt. There are "staff memos" all over the park that give you clues as to how to acquire items or solve puzzles, and I was never truly stuck. If I thought I was, I'd go back to the collected staff memos and flip through them for a reference to something I hadn't done yet, then focus on that. A couple times, not knowing where to go after getting a new key, I stumbled on a room that needed that key. Locked doors are marked on the map, and unsolved puzzles are circled, but there is never any indication of what items are to be used where (i.e., all locked doors are red on the map; there is no differentiation between those that need a silver key or a gold key or whatever, even after you have discovered the doors). Luckily, the map isn't very big, and there is, if not a "fast travel" system, a "faster travel" system that you gain access to later on. So being stuck means there are only so many places you can look.
Definitely recommend for a short survival horror experience. It doesn't reinvent the genre or anything, but it's just so solid.
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A Highland Song (PC) by dkirschner (Oct 15th, 2025 at 15:46:38) |
I beat this a couple weeks ago and haven't sat down to write about it because I've been busy with the move. Long story short, it didn't really land with me. I like the premise. You play as a girl in the Scottish Highlands traversing the hills to meet her uncle. You have to reach her uncle in a lighthouse before Beltane (though I arrived one day late, and I don't know what would have been different had I arrived on time).
It's more or less a narrative exploration/platforming game. You run and climb through the hills, defying the rain, cold nights, and exhaustion. Occasionally, you discover objects or odd characters, and these piece together lore, a lot of tales of the mountains and the people who lived there. One reason the game didn't land with me is that these were small snippets of story, connected only through the fact that they relate to the Highlands. The narrator (the uncle) pipes up to speak for a few sentences to talk about whatever it is you've found, and then is gone again. These pieces of narrative feel disconnected.
The main reason the game didn't land for me though is the platforming and navigating, both of which I found frustrating, and are what you spend most of the game doing. Your character runs and climbs, but quickly loses stamina. You often have to stop and let her catch her breath. Running out of breath while climbing results in a fall and a hit to your health. Since you are racing the clock to arrive to your uncle in the lighthouse before Beltane, it is frustrating to have to stop all the time. But you do have to stop, at least to sleep, and it's often a good idea to wait out rain, especially if you are tired or it is dark. Pushing through exhaustion increases your chance of injury. If your health is depleted, you automatically rest and wake up the next day, which wastes time.
You have a map to navigate. You will find postcards and other things that mention various mountain peaks. You have some minimal zoom function to scan the surroundings to try and figure out where a particular peak from a postcard or whatever is. When you reach a peak, you can guess its name and have a wider view of the area to plan your next move. The goal here is basically to move from mountain range to mountain range, getting closer to the ocean (and the lighthouse) as you go. But you never quite know where you can move between mountain ranges. You are always looking for paths; sometimes, you'll think you see one, but you'll get there and there will be no path. Other times, you'll find a path but it takes you backward. I appreciate the exploration here, but again, doing this against the timer was frustrating, as was the fact that traversing the mountains can be so time consuming because there usually isn't a straight path left or right. You have to take higher or lower routes, winding through whatever mountain you are on, to try and get to where you are trying to go. You can see passable and unpassable routes on the map, so at least you can plan your route, though again, paths to the next range are something you have to discover.
The game reminded me of another climbing game I played last year, Jusant. I remember feeling in a flow state playing Jusant, focusing on the motions of climbing. There is one type of sequence in A Highland Song that did something similar, and I wish there was more of it. Those were the musical rhythm sections when you come upon a deer. The deer will run and you chase it. Rousing folk music starts playing as you chase the deer, and you time button presses to make the character jump. These sequences were engrossing. Honestly, I had thought that there would be more music in A Highland Song. I would have liked more of these sequences! Perhaps they could have been worked into navigation to make finding paths or reading the map clearer. Anyway, this is a short game, so I don't feel like I wasted my time. My least favorite inkle game, but still with its charm.
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Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (PC) by jp (Oct 11th, 2025 at 21:51:10) |
I'm 7 and a 1/2 hours in...and the game gets more interesting the longer I play. By interesting I really mean stylish and with cool effects and ideas.
I had been lamenting that we hadn't played a "typical" point and click adventure game when this one came up on the docket. (previous game was Creaks, which I thought was a point and click in that sense, but it wasn't). So, lucky me! This one is a "traditional" point and click. At least in the sense of having an inventory and having to figure out when to use which items. But, there isn't really much in the way of conversations with characters and you get the items mostly as a result of solving a puzzle (like opening a locked door and the room inside has the item) and where to use the item isn't really a challenge...it's just getting the items in the first place that is tricky!
And wow is this game tricky. LOTS of puzzles - all kinds, logic and word, and visual, etc. The hardest thing so far is not knowing when you have all the info to solve a puzzle and when you don't..which sort of sucks and it's been sort of trial and error for me so far. There IS a logic to certain kinds of rooms and things like that - for example the wonky movie posters are all clues to a number lock that will open the door. So, those are all nearby. But, I just solved a year room - and the insides of that room were clues to a puzzle box that's in a totally different room. Id forgotten about that so it took a while to figure out where to go. Sigh.
Curiously I feel like there's never a MILLION open threads to pull on - I seem to get stuck and can then pull on a different thing, or am able to open a new door, then open some shortcuts and so on.
The biggets "mega(?)" puzzle/theme so far is this giant maze I need to solve - and I've done it three times! First as the main maze (the red maze), then in a portable videogame cartridge I bought in the game (even in videogames I buy more videogames, lol), and the third was when I found quiz club - which has the same maze again - but in 1st person view (the first time was 3rd person, then 2nd person, and now 1st!).
Cool stuff, and creepier the more I play. Supposedly it's an almost 20 hour game? I'm not sure I'll have the brainpower to keep going! But, maybe so? We'll see...
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skate. (360) by davidTaylor |
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most recent entry: Friday 8 February, 2008
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Entry #2
Gameplay:
In the first log I complained about some camera issues in the game, while the issues certainly haven't gone away, I did notice that when your characters get going very fast (going down a steep hill for example)your character goes semi-transparent so you can see what's directly in front of you. This was especially useful given that one of the challenges involves bombing down a steep hill and going through a fairly small area in order to hit a jump, without the transparency this challenge would be nearly unplayable as it is it's pretty fun. After I beat a few of the early challenges the city really opened up, I look forward to fully exploring all the sights that the city has to offer.
Design:
So far the level designs have been pretty good. All the areas I've visited nicely compromise between looking realistic while still providing lots of interesting objects for the player to skate in. I'm not totally sold on the control scheme, though. While I stand by my enthusiasm in the first entry, I'm finding very hard to perform some of the more difficult tricks with any regularity. This isn't a big deal in itself since the most difficult tricks are called the most difficult tricks for a reason, but it seems weird that if I make a mistake when trying to perform a specific trick that instead of crashing I simply perform a different trick. Speaking of crashing, I was impressed by the ragdoll in skate., rather than simply going completely limp upon crashing the movement of the players avatar actually looks fairly realistic. This can make some of the more bone crunching crashes downright painful to watch.
Much of the games gameplay comes from shooting videos. The player about 30 seconds to perform specific goals in order to complete the challenge. The interesting thing is that the player can start the video pretty much where ever they want. This adds a much deeper level of challenge to completing the video challenges since the matter of finding the right area becomes as equally or perhaps even more important than just being able to perform tricks. This adds a very nice non-linear exploratory element to the game.
One last thing, all the recycling bins in this game look like the helmet of the character from Timeshift. I found this really distracting for some reason.
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